If You See A Mangy Calico Cat...

Off and on over the past several months I have participated in one way or another with the daily five minute freewrite hosted by @mariannewest.

During that time, the daily prompts have been one word, meant to create a topic to write about, or be inserted somehow in the post. It could be the focal point, or what I prefer, just another word in the story. The more seamless it fits in, the better.

Lately, instead of one word, there have been two or more word phrases mixed in. At first, I thought this made it harder, but then I realized it was actually quite the opposite. It wasn't so much that the words always fit together, or fleshed out a story (sometimes they do), but because the phrases become that much more descriptive.

Since last week when I caught up on two weeks worth, the prompts have been:

• mangy Calico cat
• the sexy tango
• stale pepperoni pizza
• frayed power cord
• warm amber eyes

Now, in my mind, this is one of those times where the five phrases essentially write the story. Since I've been taking each prompt and using them in the order given, this group would easily look like this:

I was hallucinating. I knew I was. Why else would I see a mangy Calico cat doing the sexy tango with a stale pepperoni pizza twirling on one paw and a frayed power cord clutched in the other, all the while, beckoning me with warm amber eyes? That's not normal, right?

It's not often that each prompt fits together so well in a paragraph, but this one does. I could stop there, too, but a drug induced hallucination seems a little too easy. Maybe I could try something a little hardboiled:

The dame was trouble, like a mangy Calico cat—from a distance, beautiful, charming, nice. A girl you could really dance the sexy tango with. Up close, though, she was more like stale pepperoni pizza—a looker, but tasteless—or a frayed power cord—you might get lucky and she'd be happy for a long time, or she might just up and—ZAP!—electrocute you. Accidentally, of course.

I knew all of this. The problem was, those blasted warm amber eyes. They messed with your head.

Or it could be a part of a thriller perhaps, where the protagonist is maybe in an alley, trying to hide and this scene plays out in front of them:

The trash bin wasn't much cover, but Garrick was nearly positive he had lost the men who were following him. What did they want? What had he done? He couldn't think of a single reason why anyone would want to kidnap him or harm him in anyway. He was a nobody. He dressed like one. His looks did not scream, "Big ransom!"

As his heartbeat slowed along with his breathing, Garrick made note of his immediate surroundings. He nearly started when he caught a slight movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a tail, flicking back and forth, belonging to a malnourished and mangy Calico cat. It wasn't looking at him, though, but across the alley at a horde of rats performing acrobatic feats that were at once gruesome and alluring.

For a moment, Garrick couldn't tell what was causing the strange, almost choreographed frenzy. The sight caused a flash of memory, something Armen had said about a time he had watched rats chewing on something in a similar fashion, and scrambling over each other in a six inch mound to do it. What had he called it? The sexy tango? The thought made Garrick want to vomit. This was the farthest thing from sexy he had ever seen.

And yet, there was the feline watching the mass of moving fur, and so was he, despite possibly being in mortal danger. He was about to look away when he saw the object of the rodents' affection—a very stale pepperoni pizza. It was almost gone.

A frayed power cord, hanging from a rusted air conditioner abandoned nearby, had been caught up in the middle of the feast, and nearly chewed through.

Meanwhile, the cat just watched with moist, warm amber eyes. Maybe it was too sickly and starving to move. Just its tail. Flick. Flick. Flick.

Okay. I think that more or less gives you an idea of what my mind does with some pretty descriptive prompts. The cool thing about it, there's a number of ways the prompts could take the story and I think that's what I like most about participating in the freewrite. Let the words guide, if not virtually freewrite themselves.

_{Images source—Pixabay}